How to survive in the pool of festivals: A guide for the right use of PR to promote music festivals by Lisa Krüger-Franke A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for MA in Journalism and Public Relations Faculty of Journalism & Media Communications Griffith College Supervisor: Robbie Smyth August 2016 I. Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of the MA in Journalism & Public Relations, is my own; based on my personal study and/or research, and that I have acknowledged all material and sources used in its preparation. I also certify that I have not copied in part or whole or otherwise plagiarised the work of anyone else, including other students. Signed: .......................................... Dated: .......................................... II II. Abstract Music festivals have been around since the ancient Egyptian times and they’ve developed into an even bigger, more popular thing in the recent history. Beside all the already existing festivals around Europe, there are new ones being created all around the continent year after year as well. This arises the question, how those can survive in the pool of already existing festivals. I wanted my research to mainly focus on Ireland and Germany in comparison, but since it’s becoming more and more popular to travel for festivals and since some events are also famous beyond the border of their home country, I decided to include a few other countries as well. In order to answer the question I was conducting a content analysis with articles about ten different festivals in 20 different newspapers around Germany, Ireland, England and the US. The timeframe included 2010 to 2016 and I looked at both successful and failing events. On top of that, I conducted six interviews with journalists, both German and Irish, and two interviews with festival organisers, one Irish and one Suisse. The whole research showed, that there’s not much difference in the basis of festival promotion within Europe, it only depends on its size and at times on the size of the country. It became clear as well, that branding should be the first step when establishing a new music festival. The research also showed that the line-up will probably always be the most important factor and that even bigger festivals can get negative comments about their choice of headliners. On top of that, it is important to be different and not copy other festivals in what they’re doing in order to get attention from journalists and the public. III III. Acknowledgment First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Robbie Smyth for giving me all the guidance needed to finish this dissertation in time and the way I wanted it to be. Thanks in general to all of Griffith College and the amazing lecturers I had over the last year for teaching me so much more than I could have ever imagined and opening my eyes to new possibilities. Other than that, I want to thank my (Facebook) friends, without whom I would have never been able to get together so many interesting interviews for this dissertation. I know the best people. Also, a big thanks to Laura for reading through this work. I also want to thank my interviewees for taking time out of their busy working lives to answer my questions. Without them this dissertation wouldn’t have been possible. Another huge thank you to the best classmates I could have asked for, without them I would have had far more breakdowns over assignments than I actually did. But the biggest thanks of all goes to my family, that never stopped supporting me. It’s only because of them that I had the opportunity to come over to Dublin to do my Masters in the first place. Thank you. IV IV. Table of Contents I. DECLARATION II II. ABSTRACT III III. ACKNOWLEDGMENT IV IV. TABLE OF CONTENTS V V. LIST OF FIGURES VI VI. LIST OF TABLES VII 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 3 2.1 CREATION OF A CORPORATE IDENTITY 3 2.2 HISTORY OF MODERN MUSIC FESTIVALS 7 2.3 THE GERMAN AND IRISH FESTIVAL ENVIRONMENT 11 2.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 14 3 METHODOLOGY 15 3.1 QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD: INTERVIEWS 15 3.1.1 INTERVIEWS AND THEIR TECHNIQUES 16 3.1.2 INTERVIEWS WITH FESTIVAL ORGANISATIONS 16 3.1.3 INTERVIEWS WITH JOURNALISTS 17 3.2 QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHOD: CONTENT ANALYSIS 19 3.2.1 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND ITS TECHNIQUES 19 3.2.2 THE SIX STEPS OF A CONTENT ANALYSIS 20 4 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 24 4.1 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS: CONTENT ANALYSIS 24 4.1.1 FINDINGS SEPARATED INTO DIFFERENT NEWSPAPERS 27 4.1.2 ANALYSIS OF CATEGORIES 28 4.1.3 COVERAGE OF THE BIG FESTIVALS: COACHELLA AND GLASTONBURY 31 4.1.4 COVERAGE OF A CRITICISED BUT STILL RUNNING FESTIVAL: ROCKAVARIA 32 4.1.5 COVERAGE OF TWO FAILING FESTIVALS: OXEGEN AND BIG CHILL 33 4.1.6 HEADLINES AND QUOTES 37 4.2 ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS: INTERVIEWS 40 4.2.1 INTERVIEWS WITH JOURNALISTS 40 4.2.2 INTERVIEWS WITH FESTIVAL ORGANISATIONS 46 5 CONCLUSION 48 5.1 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS 49 5.2 HOW TO BRAND A FESTIVAL 53 5.3 TIPS FOR FESTIVALS AND FUTURE IDEAS 56 VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY 58 VIII. APPENDIX 64 V V. List of Figures Figure 1: Overview over newspapers analysed ...................................................................... 22 Figure 2: Percentage of evaluation groups ............................................................................. 26 Figure 3: Percentage of categories ......................................................................................... 29 Figure 4: Quotes ..................................................................................................................... 40 VI VI. List of Tables Table 1: Oxegen coverage ...................................................................................................... 34 Table 2: Big Chill Coverage ..................................................................................................... 37 Table 3: Key Findings Content Analysis .................................................................................. 49 VII 1 Introduction Hundreds of music festivals happen every year all around Europe, some of them only one- day open-air concerts, others three-day or even five-day camping events. But still, new festivals are being established all around the continent year after year, some of them with great success, others not. This paper is trying to give a guideline for those, who decide to create a new successful festival. Jon Pareles, Ben Ratliff and Jon Caramanica, three journalists at the New York Times, just recently published an article, in which they are criticising all the big music gatherings around, such as Coachella or Bonnaroo. “Some clever person reminds us that these festivals aren’t about music” (2016), they write. For them, every festival’s own essence “has more and more to do with variations in clothes, drugs, topography and regional weather, and less to do with the sounds coming from the multiple stages” (Pareles et al., 2016). On top of that, for them, most mainstream gatherings have “no real centre and no theme other than hugeness” (Pareles et al., 2016). That doesn’t mean that those big mainstream festivals are not getting enough visitors anymore; in 2015, both weekends of Coachella, for example, were sold out with 198,000 visitors in total (Canal, 2016). And this is just one example. But again, the festival fatigue goes on and especially music journalists are in need of something new and different. This paper mainly focuses on Ireland and Germany and their festival environment with a few examples from the UK and the US. Pareles, Ratcliff and Caramanica’s article might only discuss the big American festivals, but it’s still applicable to other European ones. Germany and Ireland have a big festival environment and every now and then new events are being added to the calendar. Ireland has a number of music festivals, such as Electric Picnic, Longitude or Forbidden Fruits, with some of them including camping and others being close to the city without any camping ground on site. The music style reaches from alternative rock to electronic music to mainstream sound. All three of those events and most other music festivals around Ireland 1 offer not only music but also other art forms, such as comedy, on their festival grounds throughout the duration of the event. There are a lot of festivals around Ireland that cover other music and art styles as well, such as the Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival, but this paper only focuses on the more or less mainstream music festivals. In Germany, there are a lot more music gatherings than in Ireland, which is obviously also because of the country’s size and population. The music styles here also reach from electronic music over alternative rock to hip-hop, including mainstream bands as well. A lot of the festivals around Germany have changed and commercialised within the last years, with ferris wheels à la Coachella being build up, for example at the twin festivals Southside and Hurricane Festival and expanded capacities at different events. Big events in Germany include Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, Melt! or Splash!. All of them once had a focus on only one particular music style, but the line-ups are blurring into each other nowadays. This leads back to the statement that was made in the New York Times, that music isn’t the most important part at a lot of music festivals anymore. My main goal of this study is to find out, what aspects the media focuses on in their coverage and therefore what aspects festivals should focus on in their creation phase. For that reason, I conducted a content analysis of over 100 articles in 20 different newspapers about ten different festivals in Germany and Ireland but also internationally. On top of that, I conducted interviews with journalists, in order to find out what type of promotion they prefer and what tip they would give organisations.